Category: Design

‘I Have to Get Rid of It’

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Stewart Alsop on the Droid:

The hardware (which is Motorola’s) mostly works. The keyboard is horrible and I’ve never used it, which means that it is a real design flaw given how much weight and mechanical operation it adds to the device. (The software keyboard works well enough that I’ve found it adequate but the other problems with the software make it barely useable.) The camera button on my Droid doesn’t work and never has, so I call up the camera from the home screen. The on-off button is poorly placed for one-handed operation and requires real force to actuate. But this is just version 1.0 issues that Motorola will likely fix next time out.

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Web Apps Just Aren’t the Same

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Gruber:

The argument that you can make iPhone web apps that are “good enough” misses the entire point of iPhone apps — the entire point of the iPhone itself, even — all of the things that drive Twitter users to pay $3, $4, or $5 for apps that do the same things that can be done for free by loading Twitter’s web site in MobileSafari. “Good enough” is not good enough on the iPhone.

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‘They Want to Talk to People’

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Engadget has posted the third installment of the Engadget Show. In this episode, Joshua Topolsky interviewed HTC’s director of user experience Drew Bamford who discussed HTC Sense and the design problems his team ran into when designing their product. It’s a great look at how sketches turn into something millions of people use everyday.

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Steve Jobs on the ‘Digital Hub’

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Once again, Jobs’ prediction proved crazy accurate. Today — just 8 years later — the Mac is the machine of choice for people who care about photography, video editing and music. Looking back, it’s clear Jobs had things like iLife and Apple’s pro applications in mind even back in early 2001, before the iPod and OS X had even shipped. It’s pretty impressive the amount of vision the guy has — and how hard Apple works to make that vision a reality.

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Simplenote on the Desktop

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I’ve preached the goodness of Simplenote before. It’s a great iPhone/web app combo that allows users to access text-only notes from anywhere.

Up until recently, the best option to run Simplenote as an application on the Mac was in Fluid.

Enter JustNotes. It’s a menubar app that syncs with Simplenote, but with a grace and styling that Fluid can’t match. I’ve been using it for several days and have no complaints. If you use Simplenote, check it out.

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